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Chapter 10

Cardiovascular Drugs: Antiarrhythmic and Heart Failure Drugs

Chapter 10

Cardiovascular Drugs: Antiarrhythmic and Heart Failure Drugs

Electrophysiology of Normal Cardiac Rhythm
The normal cardiac rhythm is a synchronized electrical activity that facilitates the regular and coordinated contraction of the heart muscle. This process …
Mechanism of Cardiac Arrhythmias
Arrhythmias are irregular heart rhythms occurring when the heart's electrical impulses become abnormal. These disturbances can lead to various …
Antiarrhythmic Drugs: Class I Agents as Sodium Channel Blockers
Class I antiarrhythmic drugs are used to treat various types of arrhythmias or irregular heart rhythms. These drugs block the sodium (Na+) channels in the …
Antiarrhythmic Drugs: Class II Agents as β-Adrenergic Blockers
Adrenergic stimulation generally impacts cardiac rate and rhythm. Specifically, stimulation of the β-adrenoceptors triggers an increase in …
Antiarrhythmic Drugs: Class III Agents as Potassium Channel Blockers
Class III antiarrhythmic drugs are a group of medications that can prolong action potentials in the heart. They achieve this by blocking potassium …
Antiarrhythmic Drugs: Class IV Agents as Calcium Channel Blockers
Class IV antiarrhythmic drugs, such as verapamil and diltiazem, block calcium channels. They primarily affect the heart, slowing the conduction in …
Pathophysiology of Cardiac Performance
Typical heart performance is influenced by heart rate, rhythm, myocardial contraction, and metabolism or blood flow. The cardiac muscle exhibits distinct …
Pathophysiology of Heart Failure
Heart failure (HF) is a progressive syndrome involving ventricles that leads to inadequate cardiac output. It can be classified based on location and …
Heart Failure Drugs: Inotropic Agents
Positive inotropic agents are commonly used as the first line of treatment for heart failure. One such agent is digoxin, derived from the genus Digitalis, …
Heart Failure Drugs: Diuretics
Heart failure and kidney perfusion are interconnected in a complex way. Reduced renal perfusion and venous congestion are two significant factors that …
Heart Failure Drugs: Inhibitors of Renin-Angiotensin System
The activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) contributes to cardiac remodeling, and inhibiting the …
Heart Failure Drugs: β-Blockers
β-adrenergic antagonists, commonly known as β-blockers, block the effects of sympathetic neurotransmitters such as noradrenaline (NA) and …
Testing the Efficacy of Pharmacological Agents in a Pericardial Target Delivery Model in the Swine
To date, many pharmacological agents used to treat or prevent arrhythmias in open-heart cases create undesired systemic side effects. For example, …
Automated Contraction Analysis of Human Engineered Heart Tissue for Cardiac Drug Safety Screening
Cardiac tissue engineering describes techniques to constitute three dimensional force-generating engineered tissues. For the implementation of these …
A Computerized Test Battery to Study Pharmacodynamic Effects on the Central Nervous System of Cholinergic Drugs in Early Phase Drug Development
Investigating potential pharmacodynamic effects in an early phase of central nervous system (CNS) drug research can provide valuable information for …